STATINS AND ITCHY SKIN

[Red18]

Hi all. On 20mg atorvastatin. Been on them for 12 months now. Mentioned in my last post about hair loss... Now I'm noticing I'm itching all over??? My body and scalp. Do you think this could be related? Now I've also been prescribed 30mg isosorbide mononitrate about 2 months ago, and it's just dawned on me could this be the culprit and not my statin?? Torn really between which med is now causing me my 2 issues?? I did Iinitially think the statin but now i think is maybe the isosorbide mononitrate? Any light on this would be of great help. Thankyou.

[sandybrown]

Hello,

You may be allergic to combination of medication and food.!!

Please keep a food diary check the reactions.

What are your cholesterol lipid numbers?

Did you doctor do a risk analysis before giving statin medication?

[Red18 in reply to sandybrown]

Hi Sandybrown. Haven't introduced any new foods at all... I'm upset really statin doing its job really well HDL raised, LDL reduced and triglycerides 0.6MMOL. All results optimal and no muscle pains but it's the hair loss and itching driving me crazy....... Now the isosorbide mononitrate is also doing it's job beautifully no angina whatsoever! My diet I have changed. Had too. Want to live and have a quality of life and on taking my diagnosis on board am being responsible. My GP is ringing me today so I think firstly I'll ask to change my statin to rosuvastatin?? I have read that this is a fairly new statin and doesn't seem to cause any hair loss. The itching I may take some piriton and see if this helps any?? Thankyou for replying to me. Have a lovely day.

[sandybrown in reply to Red18]

Allergy is a very difficult problem to find an answer. My allergy started back in 1979>

I take one antihistamine once a day to control my allergy reactions. Side effect of some antihistamine can also give allergy reactions? It is imperative to read the full notes of any mediation.

One has to be very careful. I am allergic to salicylate. I am unable to take aspirin!

Take care.

[valeriep]

Unfortunately, it seems a lot of heart medications can be responsible for both hair loss and itching. I didn't experience skin itching from statins until my current cocktail of drugs was prescribed for me post-stents. (I can't remember which one causes itchiness, but I know at least one of them does!) If it's localised - I used to get a lot of itching on my lower legs - I found E45 Itch Relief cream to be very effective. I don't think I'd add another drug into the mix without first consulting a GP/pharmacist.

[Red18 in reply to valeriep]

Afternoon valeriep. Thanks for replying. Never thought about E45. I'll get some today. Thanks

[valeriep in reply to Red18]

You're welcome! Make sure you get the Itch Relief cream, not the general E45 cream. It really helped me and seems to have stopped recurrences.

[kasibarndoor]

When I used to take statins I got itchy skin rather like pins and needles I found that taking Co Q10 helped but now I have stopped them most of the side effects have gone

[Red18]

Hi Kasibarndoor. I've now stopped taking them too. Hopefully no more itchy skin and no more hair loss. Thanks for replying

[chkFLA]

Hi all! I know this thread is 2 years old but maybe my situation will help others. I live in the US and despite weight loss, exercise and healthy diet still had very high cholesterol.

My doctor prescribed a commonly used statin and within a month I could hardly get out of bed I hurt so bad. Turned out that my liver enzymes were through the roof.Over a period of 4 years I tried every know cholesterol medication (not just statins) and had the same result with all. Finally something called Livalo came on to the market. Usually prescribed in 2 mg dose but, via trial and error, we found that I could tolerate a 1 mg dose taken 3 times a week. This only brought my total cholesterol down to 220 but still a big improvement. Even on Livalo I would have to take a "medication holiday" every 4 or 5 months when the muscle aches got more pronounced.

Then a couple of years ago my health plan said they would no longer cover the Livalo--unless I started all over with the other medications. After all I had been through I didn't want to start from scratch, so ended up buying generic Livalo through a Canadian Pharmacy intermediary. This generic by the way was not available for sale in the U.S. It didn't take me long to discover that I could take even the highest dose of generic Livalo with no muscle pains whatsoever. For the first time in my life my cholesterol was below 200 (180 actually). So I was pretty happy.

Then last year I started itching. First on my back, then my neck and shoulders--and eventually everywhere. No rash at all. My doctors changed my blood pressures meds, did all sorts of tests, I changed all of my body wash, moisturizers, laundry detergents, you name it trying to find what was causing the itching. Topical products did nothing. They finally put me on prednisone because the itching was preventing me from sleeping more than 15 minutes at a time. Thankfully the prednisone worked but it took me 3-1/2 months to wean off of it. But 6 weeks later it started all over again.

On a whim, I decided to stop taking the statin. I had tried everything else and figured I had nothing to lose at this point. And besides they were ready to start me on prednisone again. Within 24 hours the itching decreased and now, three days later, is almost entirely gone. Partly I'm elated and partly I'm aggravated that I've suffered for over a year before making this discovery.

Maybe I'll just have to resign myself to having high cholesterol in the future. But at least the itching ordeal seems to be over.

[chkFLA]

Not sure how the A1C enters into the equation, but I just had blood work for that and my result was 5.4. As for cholesterol, the last time I was tested that I was not taking any statin at all was in 2018. My results were as follows: total cholesterol 257; triglyceride 137, HDL 87.

And then the LDLCAL was 142.6 and VDLCAL was 27.4--never understood these last two numbers.

Since stopping my statin, the itching settled down dramatically and then started to get a bit worse--but not to the extreme it was before.